Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World [Paperback]

I enjoy the flow of the writing. Just how O'Shea assembles so many facts I don't know. He provides a "you are there" feeling for the many battles. I am surprised so many details of those battles have survived a millennium. One learns to at least appreciate from this book the value in having adequate supplies of water during a battle. O'Shea apparently visited many of the locations he covers in this book including the battlefields to the extent the exact sites are known nowadays.

That "convivencia", an unusual level of cooperation between Muslims, Christians, and Jews was possible in places during much of the period O'Shea covers, is one good reminder of the value of studying history. One might not suspect given current relationships among these groups that such intellectual and cultural sharing was possible.

On the other hand, the barbarism during the warfare including the Crusades is a reminder of the violence associated with different cultures and religions. The description of Crusader's slaughter of so many defenseless man, women and children in the 1099 ransack of Jerusalem is shocking albeit briefly described. I'm reminded of the destruction of an entire Cather city by Crusaders that O'Shea describes in his earlier work "The Perfect Heresy".

Would O'Shea hope to earn enough from this book to sufficiently reward his major efforts? He must love what he is doing. Hopefully readers will support him in writing histories for a long time.

Without a doubt, this is a timely book. After a long but unquiet slumber, the old myths of religious conflict are being resurrected and the "clash of civilisations" (to use Samuel P. Huntingdon's ghastly and ill-omened phrase) are being trotted out by demagogues on both sides of the Atlantic. Time, then, for an informed and humane study of the shared history of Islam and Christianity. Fortunately, this book is both beautifully written and deeply perceptive, evoking sympathy and admiration for both sides in a story of sibling rivalry with more than its fair share of thuggish atrocity and ignorance. O'Shea's contention is that medieval Christianity and Islam represent a single civilisation - he unearths the delightful term "convivencia" to describe their mutual living arrangements - and he traces the ebbs and flows of confessional politics across the Mediterranean up to the dawn of the modern era.

In the early chapters it is of course hard not to sympathise with the Muslims: cultured and sophisticated, riding a high tide of enthusiasm for a faith that has brought them both unity and prosperity, colliding noisily with the hotch-potch of barbarian fiefdoms and decayed Roman oligarchies pock-marking the shattered margins of the Middle Sea. If only those maladorous warlords would just settle down under the benign yoke of the Prophet and just get on with each other! As the centuries roll by, the Christians acquire their own ramshackle charm - part wild-eyed fanatic, part cumudgeonly Robin Hood - while various parts of the Caliphate implode under incompetent monarchs and the internal contradictions of a revolutionary faith mired to worldly power (a paradox shared by the Christian churches of this period). The gruesome debacle of 1565 at Malta, that O'Shea marks as the exhausted (and politically irrelevant) conclusion of the saga, is a testimony to the stupendous courage and purblind folly on both sides, and O'Shea's nod to the way in which the emerging modernity sidelined and exploited old religious divisions.

Nevertheless, despite the bungled sieges, horrific murders and the whistful tragedy of cultural decline in Muslim Spain, wholly admirable characters emerge. In particular, key eras punctuate the stereotype of "medievalism" with oases of sanity and tolerant dialogue; no one can be untouched by the grandeur of Almohad Seville or the Bohemian court of Sicilly. It's O'Shea's peculiar gift that he makes everyone both interesting and sympathetic.

O'Shea is my favourite sort of historian, of the old-fashioned storyteller school, yet he studiously sidesteps the temptations to be partisan or glibly romantic. Indeed, it is his wry humour that shines through and he has a masterful eye for the telling detail and ironic anecdote. He has a generous spirit towards human fallibility which can make the byzantine intrigues of popes, pirates and potentates comprehensible, rather than maddeningly obscure.

There are two pitfalls awaiting the historian of religion. One, the more conservative, is to take religious motives at face value. This outlook sees Christian paladins heroically "saving" Europe from Muslim tyranny... or uncircumcised barbarians ravaging the Abode of Peace, depending on your allegiance. The other, following Marx, views all religious rhetoric as a smokescreen to hide and justify crude economic and dynastic ambitions. O'Shea avoids both errors and the great men and women of this era come through as flawed, but not fools.

The author's other strength, perhaps his greatest as a writer, is his ability to communicate the texture of architecture, of olives and orchards, of the Mediterranean sunlight and the impact of environment. He has visited most of the major locales and opens or concludes each chapter with a contemporary tour of the monuments of the past. Once again, he can exploit the irony of such double-vision (the forgotten meadow where a tumultuous battle raged; the architectural palimpsest where the influence of both faiths is frozen in stone) without thereby diminishing the immediacy of the historical events he recounts.

In short, this is a fine book indeed and one that corrects much muddle-headed misinformation about the history of Islam or of Christendom. And it's a delight to read.

The other commentators have said pretty much all about this book; what I like is the level of the language, addressed to the intelligent layman without on the one hand going into excessive detail nor on the other being patronising/simplistic. A book to which I will return at times for a refresh.